A personal protection officer opened the rear left door for the PM, who got in obediently and sat next to Bowler. Walker quickly got into the front, before any of Bowler’s team tried to take the seat. The PM’s two chase cars pulled out in front and behind, switched on their sirens and headed south for the M40 and London.

“It’s bad news, Prime Minister. Brace yourself for a shock.” Bowler faced the PM, who nodded for her to speak, all attention now.

“It’s HMS Padstow, the minehunter with the NATO mine countermeasures group. She’s been sunk with all hands in Riga. She was bombed early this morning by the Russians. They also sank a German ship. They’re invading Latvia. It’s war.”

The white-faced Prime Minister crumpled in deep shock on the seat behind him. Walker knew it was best to say nothing and leave him to feel sorry for himself. Better to spend the time thinking through the ramifications of this news and how best to spin it. But try as he might on the journey back, he could not see one good thing about what Bowler had told them. It was an unmitigated disaster and the press were going to eat them alive.

Tomorrow’s headlines didn’t bear thinking about—and as soon as he could, he’d get onto the editors to do as much damage control as possible. What that ship was even doing there, in the middle of a war zone, he could not imagine, but he would find out. He suspected that the admirals and generals had allowed this to happen. But there was no point tearing into them as they so richly deserved. At least not yet.

An hour and a quarter later, the Prime Minister was still looking pale with the shock of realizing that his career and reputation were on the line as a result of the sinking of HMS Padstow, when Walker led him from the front door of Number 10, down the long corridor to the Cabinet Room, through the double doors and into the cramped office known as the “Den.”

“CDS will be here shortly. He’s the one who set you up for this,” said Walker. “You need to show him who’s boss.”

Shortly afterward there was a knock on the door. Walker opened it and there stood General Sir Jim Mainwaring, Chief of the Defense Staff, gray-haired, short and inclined to stoutness. A man whom Walker had initially thought of as a down-to-earth West Countryman—“a soldier’s soldier” as the press had reported his appointment with evident delight—but whom he had quickly come to respect as a canny Whitehall insider, in his own way as Machiavellian as himself.